The Martian War

CHAPTER TEN


THE UNSEEN SABOTEUR

Long after the rest of the Imperial Institute had gone to bed, Wells and Jane remained awake in their room playing cards while talking politics, culture, and the likelihood of winning against a Martian invasion. She demurely won twice, and he bested her once before leaning back against the bed and adjusting the pillow.

“Maybe we should simply move in here,” Wells suggested languidly. “No more prying landladies, no more questions about our marital status.”

“And no more afternoon bicycle rides,” Jane pointed out, “or strolls along the lane, or boating on the canals. Our relationship would have more interesting science, but less romance.”

“Less romance? Not necessarily.” He kissed her again, after which she deftly beat him at cards for a third time.

Gracefully accepting his defeat, Wells yawned. “You tire me out, Jane, in more ways than one. We should go to bed. Tomorrow will be even more exciting. I’d like a close look at that preserved Martian specimen.”

Before they could undress, Jane heard furtive creepings out in the hall. She gave Wells a perplexed look, and he sighed. “It’s probably just Griffin wandering around naked again.” He opened the door a crack, and Jane mischievously pushed in beside him.

He caught the unmistakable sounds of quick footsteps and heavy breathing, but he saw no one. Then, farther down the hall in the research wing, the door to Dr. Philby’s biological laboratory opened of its own accord, swinging wide with a faint creak. Wells was sure that his eyes had tricked him. He heard muttered curses coming from inside the room, an indrawn breath of surprise, then the tinkle of breaking glass.

“What is it, H.G.?” Jane whispered. He put his finger to her soft lips.

The wooden door creaked again, accompanied by slapping footsteps that dwindled in the opposite direction. Jane’s eyes widened as she looked both ways down the corridor, and saw no one.

Wells set his teeth. “Come with me—but quietly.”

The two of them moved under the uncertain gaslight toward Philby’s lab. Because of the deadly germs kept within the locked cabinets, the biological scientist always locked his research rooms. But when Wells tried the knob, it turned easily, and the door swung open.

Wells looked at Jane. “This is not as it should be.” Bending to inspect the keyhole, he noted scratches on the brass plate. Someone had picked the lock.

Inside, the laboratory was dimly lit. Moonlight shone through upper windows, glinting off tables crowded with neatly arranged vials and beakers. Rats rattled against the wires of their cages, anxious to escape before Philby experimented on them. Everything else remained still.

“Here!” Jane hurried to a locked sample cabinet; someone had broken out a small pane of glass and removed six of the marked test tubes stored inside.

Wells’s stomach clenched as he looked at the labels on the remaining glass vials. Philby’s handwriting was dense but clear. “Some of the specimens of cholera bacillus and bubonic plague are missing! Someone has taken them.”

“Who would want to steal a deadly disease?”

“Someone who no doubt wishes to use it, Jane. An anarchist, or syndicalist perhaps. Radical trade union  ists, Marxists. Our society has produced any number of passionate and desperate men who feel the need to make their point through terror instead of rational discourse.”

Jane’s face hardened with determination. “I’ll go sound the alarm.”

“No, if we raise a hullabaloo, we may not learn what this man is up to. Besides, if he is cornered, he could simply shatter one of the test tubes and unleash the plague upon all of us.”

Together, they hurried down the hall in the direction the stealthy footsteps had gone. Several lights burned inside Dr. Cavor’s assembly bay. The large sphere, completely covered with lightweight armor material and ready for its symposium demonstration, glistened in the dim light of low gas jets.

The hatch of the armored sphere was open. Equipment around the room lay in disarray, as if it had been ransacked. He knew Cavor kept an eagle eye on his workers and insisted on an organized shop, everything put in its place. “This isn’t right.”

Among the paraphernalia on the equipment benches, Wells watched several tools move by themselves. A box was gently shoved aside by unseen hands. A floorboard squeaked on the raised assembly deck.

Realizing that they were out of their depth, he pulled Jane from the open door. “We’ve got to go before he sees us. We should tell Professor Huxley.”

Wells rapped quietly but insistently, seeing the light that shone from beneath the old man’s door. “Professor Huxley, sir! Are you still awake?”

Huxley peered out at them, cinching his striped lounging robe tighter around his sleep shirt and loose trousers. “Ah, Wells— have you had a thought of some importance? A revelation that cannot wait for the light of day?” He had been reading a thick book; Wells recognized it as Dr. Moreau’s journal.

“Something much more urgent, sir.” He and Jane quickly told him what they had seen. Huxley’s bushy eyebrows drew together, and his forehead furrowed.

The professor tucked the book under his arm, pulled on slippers, and joined them. “I’ve always been concerned about enemy spies infiltrating the Institute, but after what I saw in the aquarium today, I can’t believe anyone is concerned with national boundaries.”

They hurried down gaslit corridors toward Cavor’s lab. The door was open wider than before, the gaslights still burning, but the large engineering bay seemed silent and empty. Wells looked around the room, but saw no sign of anyone. “Whoever did it seems to be gone now.”

Huxley swept his gaze over the clutter. “If we study which items have been disturbed, and which ones are missing, we can determine what this intruder was up to.” He wrinkled his nose. “Something has spilled as well.”

Jane moved purposefully to the open hatch of the cavorite vessel. Though the cavorite structural material was transparent, the interior of the spherical vessel had been paneled with sheets of thin metal, jointed like a roll-top desk in numerous adjacent sections; they appeared to be window blinds that passengers could raise to observe the outside. At present, though, they were all closed. “Professor, come look at this. The sphere is loaded with supplies.”

Huxley put his shaggy gray head next to hers. “But it was supposed to be just a demonstration model. Look there— food … water … documents.”

Jane climbed inside for a closer inspection. “Boxes of apples and carrots, loaves of bread.” She picked up one of the brown bottles of beer. “It looks as if someone was preparing for a long voyage.”

Huxley shook his head. “Cavor has not yet discovered how to make the vessel work. That was why we couldn’t show it to the Prime Minister—ah, hullo!” When he saw a set of loose charts marked with thin black lines, he climbed in next to Jane and picked up the curling papers. “These are detailed nautical maps of the English coastline. I daresay we’ve uncovered something sinister.”

Jane pointed to handwriting along the margins of the charts. “Those words aren’t in English.”

“It’s German,” Huxley said. “This is all some plot of the Kaiser’s. I was concerned the Germans might be preparing to launch into a massive war. That was why I originally called the symposium.”

Wells paced around the outside of the sphere, inspecting how it rested in the armillary cradle like a giant featureless globe. He completed his circuit of the lab, but found no sign of the intruder. He clenched his fists. He was not a large man, nor was he strong, but he intended to fight this rogue, if he should encounter him.

Huxley poked his head out of the hatch. “Alas, it may be Griffin. He is indeed mad, I think … but not in the way he makes it seem to the rest of us. I have noticed certain patterns of his behavior that lead me to suspect he has ties to Prussia. He may have been working as a spy all along, confident no one would suspect him so long as he acted the part of an eccentric. Griffin is not quite so amusingly eccentric as he lets on.”

Jane said, “If you suspected this man, why did you let him continue to work here?”

Huxley sighed, rolling up the incriminating charts. “Griffin’s genius was great, and we needed to take the risk. Given time, he may have developed a viable invisibility formula. Now though, I am afraid he is simply … mad.”

Wells felt his skin tingle, as if with a ghostly movement of air. Then very close behind him he heard a sharp exhalation of breath. Before he could whirl to confront the mysterious presence, though, someone struck him on the head. Wells stumbled from the blow, his ears ringing; colored blotches swam in front of his eyes.

“H.G.!” Jane shouted.

Wild laughter rang out like crows flying in the air. “Mad? You fools don’t bother to understand.” It was the voice of Hawley Griffin, resonating from thin air. “The old order cannot be changed—it must be destroyed and stripped away, so that a new world can be built.” He snorted with disgust. “I have spent more time thinking of politics and sacrifices than all your stuffy lords and Institute teachers have ever done.”

Wells swung at him blindly, but his fist swept through the air, and he lost his balance again, feeling dizzy and a fresh rush of pain.

“You can’t see me! You can’t hide from me! You can’t defend yourselves against me. I can go anywhere I wish.” Griffin laughed again. “I can do anything I want.”

Instead of continuing to strike out at the invisible man, Wells staggered toward the sphere, where Griffin had piled all of his stolen notes and supplies. He blocked access to the hatch. “I won’t let you get inside this vessel. And I won’t allow you near Jane either.”

At a cluttered laboratory table, beakers and flasks suddenly flew in all directions, as if Griffin had petulantly swept his hand sideways. Equipment clattered to the laboratory floor. Griffin spoke again, angry now. “Your childish meddling cannot stop me.”

Jars and boxes moved. Something scraped. Wells heard an object move on the cleared table, but couldn’t see it.

“Not only am I invisible, Professor Huxley, but I have in my possession a nitroglycerin bomb.” The chuckle resounded again, coming from nowhere. “It was the simplest thing in the world to create in my chemistry lab. No one thought to watch me.”

From inside the sphere, Jane cried out as she found a new stack of documents by the supply boxes. “He’s taken all the original papers from the symposium! All the notes and documents. He meant to run off with the secret research.”

“Yes,” Huxley said, “and no doubt he meant to steal away with the cavorite ship as well—if he could make it work.”

When Griffin laughed again, the spectral voice came from a different part of the laboratory. “And I will blow up everything in my wake, killing the greatest scientists of Britain, erasing their knowledge. When Kaiser Wilhelm has your remarkable military developments, the Second Reich will conquer not only the British Empire, but the entire world! And I will be the real power, an invisible man spying on everyone, whispering into the Kaiser’s ear.” He let out a giggle. “Then, if he doesn’t do exactly as I say, who could stop me from slipping into his chambers and slitting his throat?”

Wells refused to move from the sphere’s hatch. His head throbbed from the blow, and his vision jumped about as if he were on the deck of a heaving ship in a storm. He clamped his teeth and breathed sharply through his nose, forcing himself to cling to consciousness.

“Now you three have ruined my careful plans. I warn you, I am holding the nitroglycerin bomb, which I have masked with my invisibility formula—but I assure you, I do have it. I will set it off, unless you leave the sphere immediately. I do not intend to be stopped.”

Huxley’s expression was one of stony indignation. “An invisible man with an invisible bomb. Very convenient, Griffin. I am not a man who simply accepts things on faith.” The professor squeezed Wells’s shoulder reassuringly, keeping him in front of the sphere’s hatch. “I despise those who simply accept without proof, like Bishop Wilberforce.”

Griffin’s voice now came from near the door. “This is not an intellectual debate. Can you take the risk, Professor?”

Wells stared, hoping his eyes could distinguish some blurred outline, some murky shadow cast by the invisible man. Judging by Griffin’s voice, Wells could guess where the man was hiding— for now. But the unseen intruder could easily stalk around the room, move to a different place. Wells didn’t dare leave his protective position by the cavorite sphere. Griffin would watch every move he made.

Then, from behind the spot where Griffin apparently stood, a barrel-chested man strode through the open lab door—Dr. Selwyn Cavor! His dark eyes were bleary with sleep, but bright with anger. He moved quietly, balling his fists in annoyance. He evidently had heard everything they’d said.

Wells spoke quickly to distract the invisible man. “You’ll never get away with this, Griffin. You can’t kill all of us.” He winced, realizing that if he had written such dialogue in a story, he would have immediately edited it out.

From the work table behind him, Cavor stealthily lifted a large flask filled with a sapphire-blue liquid and moved closer.

Griffin snorted. “This nitroglycerine bomb can easily—”

As soon as the unseen man revealed his location by speaking, Cavor raised the heavy laboratory bottle and brought it crashing down. The flask shattered against something unseen in the air, spilling blue liquid.

Cavor looked very satisfied with the impact. “You’re a disgrace, Griffin.”

The blue fluid took shape in the air, and now Wells could see the silhouette of the bristly-haired chemist, traced by the fluid. The stunned invisible man let out a groan of pain, swayed, and slowly crumpled.

Then some of the blue liquid dripped down onto an object in Griffin’s hands—a rectangular shape, a box of some kind. The nitroglycerin bomb!

Griffin slumped forward, and his fingers let loose their hold.

With a yelp of alarm, Wells knocked both Jane and Huxley deeper into the sphere. “Back!” As he himself stumbled backward into the armored globe, he grasped the handle of the hatch, pulling it after him.

He almost had the door closed when the invisible bomb struck the floor.

The explosion was the loudest thunderclap Wells had ever heard, a giant fist of wind and energy. It pounded the cavorite sphere, hammering against the hatch as the detonation tore the whole laboratory apart … .

PART II



THE FIRST MEN —AND A WOMAN— IN THE MOON